Filmmaker / Visual Artist

Film

Tess Motherway is a filmmaker, visual artist and film curator from Dublin, Ireland based in Berlin since 2016. To date, Tess’s work has screened at film festivals, exhibitions & events across Ireland, the UK, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Berlin & New York. Tess’s film work responds to themes of marginalisation, equality, feminism & social commentary & she is influenced by filmmakers such as Kim Longinotto, Pipilotti Rist, Albert & Robert Maysles, Werner Herzog, Vivienne Dick, Peter Tscherkassky, Nick Broomfield, Steve James, Pat Collins & Sharon Whooley & Ken Wardrop. Heavily informed by her interest in 35mm & Polaroid photography working in an array of different film media including digital & Super8 film.

In April 2017, Tess completed an artist residency at The Trelex Residency, Switzerland where she realised her short film ‘8’. At present, Tess is collecting audio & film archive for a series of personal, experimental films & learning Super8 film development & practices as a member of Labor Berlin Analogue Film Collective. Tess is also a member of the Berlin Documentary Collective.

Filmography:

2017 – ‘Company B’ (Short Documentary)

In Ireland, boys have long been a minority in dance. As Ireland’s only contemporary dance group for young males, Company B’s objective is to create a unique space for boys to express themselves through dance & movement. Speaking about the challenges they face as boys who dance in Ireland, members reveal the obstacles they confront, how it feels to dance & why they love it.

This piece was devised in solidarity with the ‘Repeal the Eighth’ campaign in Ireland that fought for Ireland’s abortion law to be brought to referendum. Abortion was illegal in Ireland, where the Eighth Amendment of the constitution equated the right to life of a pregnant woman with that of an embryo or foetus. In doing so, it criminalised abortion in all cases except where to continue a pregnancy would result in death. Medical practitioners could lose their licence, or face jail time, if they offered advice to women in need of abortions. Every day 12 women travel to the UK to have abortions and aftercare in Ireland is minimal.

‘Éire’ – the Irish word for Ireland – symbolises that my body is not my own but, indeed, belongs to Ireland.

*On May 25th 2018 Ireland voted in favour of repealing the 8th amendment of the Irish constitution. The first legal abortions in Ireland will be available in 2019. Northern Ireland, Argentina & Poland continue to fight to change strict abortion laws.

2016 – ‘What Was. What Is. What Will Be Pt2‘ (Experimental Documentary)

An unsettling soundscape confronts moving imagery of a carefree moment, warping our experience of what we see. Another space is created where time is extended, exaggerated. Amplified. Comprised of the only archive footage of the artist as a child, and heavily influenced by her interest in analogue photography, this ‘self-portrait’ challenges the act of looking on the past with nostalgia.

2016 – ‘What Was. What Is. What Will Be Pt1‘ (Experimental Documentary)

An unsettling soundscape confronts moving imagery of a carefree moment, warping our experience of what we see. Another space is created where time is extended, exaggerated. Amplified. Comprised of the only archive footage of the artist as a child, and heavily influenced by her interest in analogue photography, this ‘self-portrait’ challenges the act of looking on the past with nostalgia.

‘Two Sugars: Intern Ireland’ is a short documentary about interning in recessionary Ireland today. Jobbridge, or, The National Internship Scheme – a government training scheme aimed at retraining Ireland’s unemployed – is one of Ireland’s main responses to the unemployment crisis, but does it work? Are interns, and the Irish economy, benefiting from the scheme? Four interns tell their story….